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How much do you know about Genetic Genealogy?
You can find out. Blaine Bettinger, the Genetic Genealogist has a fun little quiz....Posted on April 9, 2008 5:30 PM • 0 Comments •
Discovering Biology in a Digital World
My thoughts on biology, teaching, life, and exploring the living world via the digital one. Only my opinions are represented by these postings, they do not represent the viewpoints of any funding agency or Geospiza, Inc.
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I am a microbiologist and molecular biologist turned tenured biotech faculty turned bioinformatics scientist turned entrepreneur. My passion is developing instructional materials for 21st century biology (Geospiza Education).
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population genetics:
Hello Kitty! or Don't Eat Me, I Study Genetics!
Genetics textbooks abound with stories of European royalty and the hazards of having children after you've married one of your cousins. It struck me as an interesting parallel that the lion is such a popular symbol in so many royal coats of arms. Like the royal families of Europe, certain lion populations have also suffered from a few too many...Posted on December 26, 2007 11:25 AM • 1 Comments •
High school students uncover their past through their DNA
Students at Soldan International High School are participating in an amazing experiment and breaking ground that most science teachers fear to tread. Soldan students, along with hundreds of thousands of other people, are participating in the National Geographic's Genographic Project. Through this project, students send in cheek swabs, DNA is isolated from the cheek cells, and genetic markers are used...Posted on November 14, 2007 4:04 PM • 9 Comments •
Genetic Variation I: What is a SNP?
If you've read any of the many stories lately about Craig Venter or Jim Watson's genome, you've probably seen a "SNP" appear somewhere. (If you haven't read any of the stories, CNN has one here, and my fellow bloggers have posted several here, here, here, here, here, and here.) You may be wondering, and rightly so: just what is a...Posted on September 5, 2007 10:35 AM • 4 Comments •
The X-ray method for pest control
Some maggots have gotten good press lately because of their helpful ability to clean out wounds by consuming dead tissue. Screwworms however; also known as Cochliomyia hominivorax, will never be welcomed in an operating room or anywhere else. USDA Agricultural Research Service These are the creatures of nightmares. During part of their lives, they live and travel as flies, and...Posted on August 8, 2007 2:53 PM • 0 Comments •
DNA and the Dead Sea Scrolls
We went on an excursion last weekend to see the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Pacific Science Center. None of us could resist going downtown to look at written texts over 2000 years old. Uncovered in 1946, by a Bedouin shepherd, the scrolls have had an interesting history over the past 50 years, most of it out of the public...Posted on September 27, 2006 8:59 AM • 0 Comments •
White people are mutants
Razib inspired me to share some of the story behind why white people are considered derivatives. Reposted from the Classic Digital Bio. No red herrings, here! Lamason et. al. found a single gene that controls human skin color while studying pigmentation in zebra fish (1)....Posted on September 26, 2006 8:58 AM • 3 Comments •
Using HIV to prove some points about evolution, part IV
Did HIV become resistant to Atazanavir because of a genetic change? Was that genetic change inherited? Did HIV evolve? Can we explain why genetic changes at specific sites might help HIV escape the effects of the drug? Let's find out....Posted on August 23, 2006 10:06 AM • 0 Comments •
Using HIV to prove some points about evolution, part III
In which we see the results and come to our own conclusions. If you want to let other people tell you what's right and what's wrong, they will surely do so. Turn on the TV and hordes of happy actors bounce around, only too happy to help you purchase the right deodorant. Open your e-mail and everyone wants to share...Posted on August 21, 2006 10:00 AM • 0 Comments •
Using HIV to prove some points about evolution, part II
Let the experiment begin....Posted on August 19, 2006 11:35 AM • 0 Comments •
Using HIV to prove some points about evolution, part I.
When can a really bad virus be used to do something good? When we can use it to learn. The human immunodeficiency virus, cause of AIDS, scourge of countries, and recent focus of ScienceBlogs; like humans, evolves. As one of my fellow ScienceBloggers noted, few biological systems demonstrate evolution as clearly as HIV. In this series, I'm going to guide...Posted on August 17, 2006 11:59 AM • 2 Comments •
Waxing lyrical about that stuff in our ears
It's hard sometimes when you're out of synch with the rest of the world. While my fellow ScienceBloggers have been obsessing about breasts, I've been really amused by the genetics of ear wax. Eh, what's that you say? Yes, it's true. Back in March, when Nature Genetics published this paper from Yoshiura (and friends), this bit of fun just went...Posted on August 10, 2006 2:30 PM • 3 Comments •
Digital Biology Friday: That was no ape, that was my brother!
We've had a good time in the past few last weeks, identifying unknown sequences and learning our way around a GenBank nucleotide record. To some people, it seems that this is all there is to doing digital biology. They would, of course, be wrong. We can do much, much more than identifying DNA sequences and obtaining crucial information, like who...Posted on July 28, 2006 8:00 AM • 0 Comments •
